In their quest for efficiency and competitive advantage, Information Technology (IT) users are always looking for ways to improve their computer infrastructures, whether at a hardware level (such as servers, storage) or at a software level or even at a facilities level. The IT spending decisions by companies in various industries are in most cases based on a demonstration of rigorous business case and concrete return on investment (ROI). There are various techniques and existing tools to provide business cases and ROI justifications. However, these tools and techniques, either manual or semiautomatic, have basic limitations which include, for example, but are not limited to: (a) not being flexible enough and time-consuming to customize; (b) being too generic for a requested customer environment; and (c) being limited to a specific industry.
An industry survey found that IT solution vendors could better align their business case efforts by addressing the business objectives (e.g., financial rules, key issues, and goals of corporate executives) of the customer and connecting them to their technology solutions transparently.